SpatialCover Canopy Height Model (CHM) Indiana

SpatialCover Canopy Height Model (CHM) Indiana is a high resolution (1 meter) raster dataset that maps the tree height as a continuous surface for Indiana. Each pixel in the CHM represents the tree overstory height above the underlying ground topography. You can view the CHM as a colorized data layer here.

What can you do with SpatialCover Canopy Height Model (CHM) Indiana?

Approach

The SpatialCover Canopy Height Model (CHM) Indiana 2011-13 dataset was derived through processing over 8 terabytes of high resolution imagery including 2011-13 orthoimagery for Indiana, the 2012 NAIP data collection and the 2011-13 LIDAR data collection for Indiana. A Digital Surface Model (DSM) was created from first returns of the LIDAR point cloud data and bare earth elevations were removed from the DSM to derive an above ground surface model. Buildings and tree canopy were differentiated in the above ground surface model through an expert rule based classification system that used different morphological filters, the Land Cover Indiana 2011-13 data and other ancillary data sources as input.